Elite athletes to learn funding changes

Britain's Olympic and Paralympic sports are set to discover their next chunk of funding for elite athletes running up until the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016.

UK Sport will announce the four-year programme on Tuesday afternoon and those sports who hit their medal and performance targets in London can expect their funding to be maintained or increased.

That includes cycling, rowing and athletics, but swimming failed to meet its Olympic target and faces a cut under UK Sport's policy of rewarding success. The Government has already announced that overall funding for elite sport will be maintained at pre-London levels, but the announcement will centre on how the cash is divided up.

It comes just a day after the sports learned their grassroots funding levels - the money given to promote participation and develop talented youngsters. There are winners and losers in this allocation too - for example tennis has had millions of pounds of funding put on hold unless the sport can improve its plan to boost participation.

Swimming has also had three years of funding withheld until it can prove its new blueprint to increase numbers is working. The Lawn Tennis Association's four-year plan for increasing the numbers of people playing was declared "simply not strong enough" and £10.3m of its £17.4m total has been put on hold.

Other sports such as cycling, netball, triathlon and wheelchair basketball enjoyed funding rises of more than 30%. All of the Paralympic sports have seen their funding increase. For tennis, the overall funding will go down from £24.5m to £17.4m and the LTA will have to produce a convincing new plan on how it will spend the 2014-17 money otherwise it will be distributed in other ways such as directly to clubs or via trusts and foundations.

Sport England chief executive Jennie Price told the Press Association: "Tennis has not performed well in terms of participation and is broadly flat though it got a bit of bounce in the latest figures. Their plan simply wasn't strong enough to justify the four-year investment."

The LTA insists it is on the right track, and doing well with identifying promising talent, but admits there is still work to be done in boosting participation.

Simon Long, the LTA's chief commercial officer who was appointed in June and heads up the body's participation team, said: "£17.4m is a substantial potential award for British tennis, and we are working closely with Sport England to ensure that we develop the best tennis offers to increase participation, whilst continuing to deliver a leading talent programme."